Locomotives may include a system for receiving and logging operational data for use in troubleshooting or diagnosing a locomotive failure. These systems may include an event recorder that collects and communicates vehicle performance data received from multiple subsystems within the locomotive. An important purpose of the event recorder is to provide a source of data that can be retrieved from the event recorder after an event such as an accident, and provide a detailed and accurate accounting of exactly what happened leading up to and during the event. In some systems, the data is collected periodically or in response to a triggering event or fault condition. Each locomotive may have its own event recorder.
If an accident occurs, such as a derailment, crash, or other mishap, the event recorder data may be useful to help determine the cause of the event, or conditions that may have contributed to the event. Playback software for event recorder data may be used to read and process data. Currently, event recorder playback is carried out using data from one locomotive at a time. However, trains (consists) may be made up of multiple locomotives, where each event recorder may independently record data from each respective locomotive. While data from each event recorder may provide an independent set of information with respect to the event, it may be desirable to provide an event recorder playback system that provides playback and analysis of recorder data from multiple locomotives in a consist. It may also be desirable to provide a system that can receive, save, and process the data from multiple locomotives, and synchronize the data with respect to time for analysis of an event that has been recorded by a plurality of event recorders.
One system for rail vehicle time synchronization is disclosed U.S. Pat. No. 8,524,345 (“the '345 patent”). The '345 patent describes a communication method that includes communicating with a second system from a first system, and “syncing” the systems by establishing a mutual clock. Although the system provided by the '345 patent may provide for establishing a mutual clock between two locomotive control systems in a consist, it may be less than optimal. In particular, the '345 patent does not provide a system that allows for playing back recorded data from multiple recorders in the same consist. Additionally, the '345 does not align the datasets recorded in each of a plurality of event recorders to a common point of synchronization, nor does it provide a system for analysis and playback of the aligned event recorder datasets.
The presently disclosed systems and methods are directed to overcoming and/or mitigating one or more of the possible drawbacks set forth above and/or other problems in the art.